Public benefit flying and the ACA

[BigShu]

I was just poking around AOPA's online course on public benefit flying, or as they say, balancing safety and compassion. The thing that caught my eye first is the ACA, the air care alliance. This is a group of volunteer aviation organizations who do missions involving medical (organ) transport, patient transport, disaster relief, damage assessment.....sounds familiar!
I wonder why CAP isn't a part of this alliance, or why the alliance exists with CAP around. Anyone have knowledge or experience with these other organizations? Any chance they might be a fertile ground for CAP pilot recruiting?

[bflynn]

http://www.aircareall.org/listings.htm

Civil Air Patrol is listed, along with several dozen other organizations.

[Flying Pig]

Most of the people in these organizations, in my experience, donate their time and aircraft at their own expense.  They enjoy flying, helping and going home.   A lot arent interested in the vast amounts of other things that go along with being a pilot in CAP.  In addition, the majority of the types of flights they do arent missions CAP would get funded for.  Things like transporting a cancer patient to treatment once a month or taking a kid to a doctors appointment.  Many are also missionary based (definitely don't want to bring that up here!)

My Sq has recruited pilots from these types of organizations in the past.  To my knowledge only one is left and he is doing very well in CAP.  Others just werent interested in the SM program.

[Critical AOA]

I know that if I owned my own aircraft that was capable of such missions and money was not an issue that I would most likely contribute my time and efforts to those types of missions and organizations rather than CAP.   I believe that the amount of positive impact on people's lives for the time contributed would be a great deal more and I would probably enjoy the flying more as well. 

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy CAP and enjoy being a part of it but I'd rather be able to spend more time actually doing real missions and seeing more results for my efforts.

[bosshawk]

I joined AirLIfeLine in CA probably about 10-12 years ago.  That organization was folded into AngelFlightWest about 8-10 years ago and I am still a member.  I have flown quite a few missions and they are quite satisfying, but the entire cost comes out of my pocket.

At one point, AFW was approached by Oregon Wing/CAP about flying these volunteer missions.  The very quick concensus was that CAP couldn't figure out how to pay for the flights and the legal beagles didn't like the insurance responsibility.  Also, how to get to use CAP aircraft, when neither CAP nor the state EMA was involved in approving and directing the missions.

As far as I know, Oregon Wing never got involved.

I attended the ACA presentation at the AOPA Summit in Palm Springs this week and CAP was never mentioned.